Why benchmark your company against competitors?
Most teams already know a lot about their competitors. The trouble is that the knowledge lives in scattered places: a pricing screenshot in one folder, a sales rep's notes in another, a few review quotes in a doc nobody has opened since spring. You can read all of it and still not answer the simple question your CEO asks: where are we ahead, and where are we behind?
A competitive benchmark answers that question by putting every company in the same frame. You pick a fixed set of competitors, agree on the criteria that matter to buyers, and fill in each criterion for every company, including your own. The result is usually a grid, often called a competitive analysis matrix, with companies in one direction and criteria in the other. Read across a row and you see one company's profile. Read down a column and you see who leads on that criterion.
The hard part isn't drawing the grid. It's filling it in fairly. If you check your own reviews on three sites but a competitor's on one, or compare your current pricing with a competitor's pricing from last year, the matrix looks precise and points you the wrong way. Gathering the same evidence the same way for five or six companies is slow, repetitive work, and that's exactly the kind of work an AI agent handles well. It can run the same searches for every company, keep track of where each fact came from, and notice when a piece of evidence is missing for one company but not the others.
Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. You can work with Kite in your browser or in Slack. Here's how it benchmarks your company against your competitors.
How Kite benchmarks your company against competitors
Kite starts with what it already knows about your company. During onboarding it researched your positioning, products, pricing, customers, and competitors, and saved that to your team's knowledge base. That gives Kite a clear picture of the company in the first row of the scorecard and a starting list of rivals.
Next, Kite fixes the set of companies and the criteria before it collects anything, so every company is measured against the same list. It then gathers the evidence for each company with the same sources and over the same time period, and fills in the scorecard one criterion at a time.
Once the scorecard is complete, Kite reads it against your goals. It tells you where you're ahead, where you're behind, and which gaps are worth closing first, and it can start on that work. When you want to see what's changed, Kite reruns the benchmark against the same companies, so each new scorecard can be compared with the last one.
- Choose a fixed set of competitors
- Agree on what the scorecard measures
- Collect the same evidence for every company
- See where you're ahead and where you're behind
- Turn the gaps into work
- Rerun the benchmark against the same companies
Choose a fixed set of competitors
A benchmark needs a fixed set of companies, because adding or dropping a competitor halfway through makes the comparison meaningless. You can name the competitors yourself, or Kite can propose a set from its research on your market.
When Kite proposes the set, it looks well beyond the obvious names. It considers direct competitors that sell the same thing to the same buyer, and indirect competitors that solve the same problem in a different way. It also considers adjacent products that buyers sometimes mistake for yours. Each company needs two independent sources and a working website to make the list, and Kite favors the ones that buyers actually compare with you on "alternatives" pages and in review threads. Kite also names the main substitute, such as a spreadsheet, an agency, or doing nothing, because that's often the real alternative a buyer weighs.
Kite shows you the proposed set before it starts. You can swap a company in or out, and once you agree, Kite keeps that set for the benchmark and for every rerun after it.
Agree on what the scorecard measures
A competitor scorecard should measure the things a buyer weighs when choosing between you and the alternatives. Kite's default scorecard covers:
- what each company sells, who it sells to, and how much its offer overlaps with yours
- products, pricing, and packaging
- positioning and the main claims on its website
- how it ranks in search and how often it appears in AI answers
- reviews and reputation, including the themes customers praise and complain about
- proof and recent signals, such as customer logos, funding, hiring, launches, and partnerships
You can add or remove criteria before Kite starts. A team that competes on paid acquisition might add each company's current ads and the offers in them. A team whose buyers care about speed might add website performance. What matters is that the list is settled before any evidence comes in, so nobody is tempted to pick the criteria that make their own company look good.
Collect the same evidence for every company
A fair benchmark measures every company the same way, and this is where most hand-built matrices go wrong. Kite runs the same research for each company on the scorecard, using the same sources, and records the date range each piece of evidence covers.
For each company, Kite reads the live website and pricing page and pulls its search rankings and the keywords it competes on. It checks which brands answer engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude recommend. It reads public reviews and community threads, and pulls dated news about funding, hiring, launches, and partnerships. Archived versions of each website show how positioning and pricing have changed over time. When ads are on the scorecard, Kite pulls each company's current ads, including yours, and compares the angles and offers.
Evidence often covers different periods for different companies. One company may have three years of reviews while another launched eight months ago. Kite says so whenever the periods don't line up, rather than comparing a full history with a partial one.
Missing evidence gets the same care. If Kite can't find reviews for a competitor, the scorecard says "no reviews found" and explains why. It doesn't treat a missing value as a low score, because a company with no reviews captured isn't the same as a company with bad reviews. When a criterion can't be measured for every company, Kite either narrows that comparison to the companies it could measure and says so, or marks the criterion as not assessed.
See where you're ahead and where you're behind
The finished scorecard shows, criterion by criterion, where your company leads, where it trails, and where it's level with the competition. Each cell holds a short finding, such as "lowest entry price of the five, but the only one without a free trial," along with the source and date behind it and how confident Kite is in it. Kite separates what a source said from what Kite concluded, so you can tell a fact from an inference at a glance.
Kite fills each cell with a finding rather than a bare number, because a 3 out of 5 can't tell you what to fix. If you want a rating on each criterion as well, ask for one and Kite adds it beside the finding.
Kite keeps different measures apart. Ranking for a keyword isn't the same as getting traffic from it, and appearing in a sample of AI answers isn't the same as demand. When a sample is small, Kite reports counts, such as "recommended in 4 of 20 answers," instead of a percentage that sounds more precise than it is.
The scorecard also lists your strengths. Teams tend to read a benchmark looking only for gaps, but knowing that your pricing page is the clearest in the set, or that you lead on one answer engine, tells you what to protect and what to talk about more.
Related How-to pages
- How to compare AI mentions, search performance, and competitors with Search Console and Semrush: Put your AI-answer visibility, your own search data, and your competitors' rankings side by side to see where you trail on the search part of the scorecard.
Turn the gaps into work
A benchmark is only useful if it changes what you do next, so Kite ends the scorecard with a short list of moves ranked by how much each could help your goals. Each move points back to a specific gap on the scorecard. For example, if two competitors appear in AI answers for your main category and you don't, the move might be a comparison page and clearer answers on your product pages. If every competitor shows prices and you ask buyers to book a call, the move might be a public pricing page.
Kite only lists moves the evidence supports. A smaller move with clear evidence behind it beats a bigger idea it can't back up.
From there, Kite can do the work. It can write and publish comparison pages, update your website copy, improve how your site appears in AI answers, or prepare ad concepts that answer a competitor's offer. Kite asks before it publishes anything, until you decide to give it more room.
Rerun the benchmark against the same companies
A benchmark becomes much more useful the second time, because the comparison with the first one shows which way things are moving. Kite reruns the benchmark against the same set of companies and the same criteria, so each new scorecard lines up with the last one.
You can ask Kite to repeat the benchmark on a schedule, such as every quarter. Between runs, Kite can check your competitors for material changes, such as new pricing, a launch, repositioned messaging, a funding round, or a burst of hiring, and report only those. Cosmetic redesigns and routine blog posts update Kite's records without cluttering your report. Once your team adds Kite to Slack, you can also ask it to watch for competitor launches and tell you in Slack when one happens.
What you get
A shared scorecard
Your company and each competitor measured against the same criteria, with a cited finding in every cell and a clear mark wherever evidence was missing.
A read on where you lead and trail
A plain summary of your strengths and gaps across the set, with the evidence behind each one.
Ranked moves
A short list of next steps, each tied to a specific gap on the scorecard and labeled with how confident Kite is in it.
A competitor record that builds over time
Kite saves each competitor's findings to that company's pages in your team's knowledge base, so later comparison pages, campaigns, and reruns start from what it already learned.
A shareable report, if you want one
Kite can publish the scorecard as a report page with charts and tables, or as a dashboard that refreshes its data when you open it, and give you a link to share with your team.
How to get started
Tell Kite what you want to compare. You might write, "Benchmark us against Northwind, Fieldstone, and Larkspur on pricing, positioning, reviews, and AI visibility," or simply, "Show me where we're ahead of and behind our competitors."
Kite replies with the set of companies and the criteria it plans to use. Change anything you like, then approve the plan, and Kite runs the research. It delivers the scorecard in the conversation in the Kite web app or in Slack, and it can publish it as a report page if you want to share it more widely.
You don't need to connect anything for the first benchmark, because the research sources come built into Kite. Connect Semrush if you want Kite to add your own account's keyword and competitor data, and connect Google Search Console if you want your own search performance on the scorecard too. When you're happy with the first scorecard, ask Kite to rerun it on a schedule.
Integrations used for competitive benchmarking
Most of the evidence on the scorecard comes from data sources built into Kite, so you can run your first benchmark without any accounts of your own. Connect your own search tools when you want Kite to add the data your team already has.
Compare search and AI-answer standing
Built into Kite. It supplies the search rankings, keywords, and search competitors for each company on the scorecard, and the AI answers Kite uses to compare how often each company is recommended.
Connect your Semrush account, and Kite can add each company's keyword rankings, competing domains, and the content gaps between you and them.
Common questions
How many competitors should I benchmark against?
Three to five is a practical number for most small teams. That's enough to show where you sit in your market without turning the scorecard into a wall of cells nobody reads. Pick the companies buyers actually compare you with, and include the main substitute if buyers often choose it instead. Kite's growth assessment, Growth Grader, compares your company with up to three competitors, and a full benchmark can include more when you need it.
What's the difference between a competitive benchmark and a competitor analysis?
A competitor analysis goes deep on one company: what it sells, how it's growing, where it's investing, and what that means for you. A competitive benchmark goes wide. It measures your company and several competitors on the same criteria, so you can compare them directly. Many teams start with a benchmark to find where they trail, then run a deeper analysis on the competitor that's winning on the criteria that matter most.
How often should I rerun a competitive benchmark?
Quarterly works for most teams, with lighter checks for material changes in between. Run it sooner after a big event, such as a competitor's launch or price change, or your own repositioning. Keeping the same companies and criteria from run to run is what makes the results comparable, so change the set only when your market actually changes.
Can I benchmark against companies that aren't direct competitors?
Yes. You can put any company on the scorecard, such as a company in a nearby market whose growth you want to learn from, or a larger player you expect to move into your space. Kite researches every company the same way, so the comparison stays fair. It notes how much each company's offer overlaps with yours, so you know which gaps matter for winning buyers and which are simply interesting.
Can I do this for free?
Kite has a free plan that includes some usage, so you can try a benchmark before you pay. The research sources Kite uses come built in, so you don't need separate subscriptions to tools such as an SEO platform or a company-data service to run your first scorecard.